Hummingbird Disaster

My Grandmother's birthday was this weekend, sadly, the hummingbird started out fairly doomed.
The colouring ended up far more like a parrot, the beak wouldn't stay on, the gum paste cracked every chance it got, and the whole bird had an unnatural sheen to it - because of the many repairs of the cracking.
So in a way - once I got it to the location, and had it ready to put on the cake - when I found that it had broken in half - I wasn't terribly sad.






So the cake was finished without the bird - a good thing.
Although, I'm rather displeased with the end result, I suppose I should be proud at my skill level, and with the amount of experience I have.



And since people have been asking how much time I spend on this stuff - overall, this cake took me - including the 10 hours of work on the hummingbird - probably 20 hours from the making of the cakes and frostings, the flowers, and then the overall decoration. Some of that mindless tv watching time as I created flowers.

Sugar sugar baby

Today was a day of sugar happiness. Brandy came over to play and we tested out blowing sugar with a copper pipe - it was fun and educational!
It's late and I am tired, I will leave you with some photos of the progress with the cake and wish you sweet dreams.

Second Cake - Happy Birthday Des!

Somehow, the second time I did this cake, so many lessons had been learned that I pulled off something that impressed even me.

I'll take you through the process..

The birthday party was on Saturday.
Wednesday:
I made a batch of Marshmallow Fondant, and a batch of butter creme frosting.
Thursday:
I baked the duck with pound cake - and a sheet cake with a white cake mix. I also started to play with the fondant, making a water lily and some lily pads. I coloured the fondant by kneading in gel food colours (available at your local Upermarket - it adds less moisture than traditional food colouring). While the lily pads were freehand, the flour was reliant on some great fondant cutters.




The white powder you see all over is corn starch to assist in the stickiness of the fondant (I found in later attempts that this was due to way too much Crisco). I stored these in the fridge after completion.

Friday:

I started the major assembling....

First, I frosted the duck (made the day before so that it would be cooled entirely to room temperature) with a layer of butter creme frosting. This is to help the fondant stick to the cake. They say you should frost and let it sit for a while before laying the fondant to help with he sticking.. so I then coloured the fondant by kneading in some yellow food colouring. And then rolled it out to a massive sheet. Lifting the fondant sheet was not easy, even if i rolled it back on itself - it had a tendency to crack (the recipe on the baking 101 site says cracking means it needs more moisture - I added more Crisco.. this ended up being part of my problem, I used *way too much* Crisco, so the integrity of the fondant was lessened, it was too soft) - anyway. where was I? I placed the fondant over the duck and started to push, prod and mold it into shape. After much work, I got to a point where I was happy with it. I then molded and attached wings and feathers (again, the leaf fondant cutters, perfect shape!). Fondant is cool in that if you need it to stick to itself, just wet it!

Now for finishing touches - some sprayed on colour accents, thanks to my husband, and some black eyes, and we have a duck!
Now for the sheet cake - very carefully, I leveled the top with a serrated knife. I then cut it in half, for filling. On each inside of the halves I spread a very thin layer of butter cream - this was so that the filling wouldn't seep into the cake and make it all mushy. I then spread blueberry pie filling onto one side, and put the other side back on top.

Next came frosting - but first, you'll notice round rise in the cake - that is a plastic cake board, to support the duck later. I used a white store bought Betty Crocker frosting that I had dyed a bright blue. Then, I started placing green fondant cut-outs of - yes, the leaves again all around the edge.

Finishing up - add the flour and lily pad.. some spray colour accents...
Place the bird over the cake board anddd....

tada!